Coming Home
by Fellowshipper
Summary: Bobby Drake has some issues to work out. IcemanNorthstar oneshot.


**Title:** Coming Home  
**Rating:** PG-13 for adult content and some language  
**Continuity Note:** Uh...I wrote this probably two or three years ago, so obviously much has changed since then. Let's just presume JP and Bobby eventually managed to hook up somehow, shall we?

Bobby wasn't particularly concerned with being called derogatory names; God alone knew how many he'd heard directed at him throughout his life and probably far more that he didn't hear. For the most part, New York didn't care if you were male, female, black, white, gay, straight, just as long as you stayed out of the way on the sidewalks and kept your nose out of other people's business. And besides, there were worse things in the world than having it revealed that you shared your bed with someone of the same sex. Like being a mutant. Not like it could get much worse than that.

So why was it, then, that what had begun as a pleasant evening in the city had turned into shouts and shoves and finally angry, hateful words thrown out so venomously Bobby could hardly believe they came from him? Why did he find himself standing on a corner of fifth avenue with his hands in his pockets and staring at the crosswalk signal, watching it turn from red to white to red to white again while crowds of people bustled past him, jostling him about? What the hell was it about Jean-Paul that never failed to get under his skin and burn away at him, stripping the flesh from his bones and leaving him open, exposed, completely helpless against the world?

Everyone automatically assumed that it was because Bobby was still suffering from teenage confusion about his dating preferences, but he'd ruled that out as an option a long time ago. Yes, he liked women. But every now and then a man would come along and he'd like him, too. So that wasn't the problem.

It wasn't that he was ashamed of . . . what? Of going to dinner with Jean-Paul? Of dating him? Of sleeping with him? He searched his mind, hoping to find the answers there, but found there was no guilt about any of it to be revealed.

It wasn't that his parents were still holding out hope for grandchildren. It wasn't like he and Jean-Paul were considering a house in the suburbs or anything. He wasn't even thirty yet; he had plenty of time to find a nice girl, raise a family, get a dog and a mini-van and two mortgages that would never be paid off. If he did happen to stick around with a guy, well, there was always adoption. Or foster-parenting. He could sponsor a foreign child for thirty bucks a month and get a personalized letter from said child and a photo. Chia-Pets. He could have Chia-Pets and send pictures of them to his parents. He could have half the Looney Tunes cast with orange terra cotta faces and green hair.

He finally let himself be swept across the street with the rest of the crowd when the light changed for the fourth time, and he absently followed a balding middle-aged man, not particularly caring where they were going as long as it was away from Jean-Paul's posh little Manhattan loft. Who the fuck could afford a loft in Manhattan, anyway? It was small but cozy, a fourteenth floor space that overlooked the river. Bobby remembered waking some mornings to the sounds of traffic on the streets and on the water, of a thick fog spread across the sky and obliterating everything from view until it felt as though the room had been built on a mountaintop. Then the morning rush hour would start and horns would honk and angry drivers would scream at each other, and the spell was broken; the fog lifted and the river became a river again, the mysticism abandoned.

What was it, then? What was it about that infuriating, sarcastic, occasionally rude Canadian that could wind Bobby into such a state?

Bobby remembered being inexplicably terrified when the clues had at long last clicked into place in his mind. Jean-Paul was different around him because Jean-Paul saw him as being different, and that had for some reason turned Bobby's nerves to water, no longer frozen and rigid and utterly untouchable.

Most of his teammates, those he felt close enough to to entrust with such a secret, laughed when he suggested that the idea of any kind of relationship, regardless of gender, was the most frightening concept to him in the world. Of course, they'd said. That was common knowledge. But they'd missed the point. So he'd gone to Warren and explained, and had been met with much the same reaction: disbelief and patient indulgence, like a kind adult suffering a child's overly imaginative stories.

The truth of the matter was that no one took him seriously when he said that it wasn't a commitment issue, it was that he'd never, in all his twenty-eight years on earth, been involved in a relationship that wasn't based on sex. Sure, he'd fooled himself into accepting Jean and Scott's cookie cutter romance as the standard when he was younger, and for a time he honestly believed that love was very much a tangible, attainable thing. But as he got older, he realized that he'd naively embraced that idea and conveniently overlooked the fact that every single one of his girlfriends had been chosen because she was attractive. Oh, sure, he didn't like acknowledging how shallow his still developing self had been, but then again, he'd been a teenager plucked from the midst of his high school years by that genetic joke known as a mutation, so that could be expected.

It was the fact he continued to do it as an adult that he couldn't reconcile himself with. Warren had the decency not to laugh in his face, but there was nothing he could do about the sly grin that was more than enough to say he thought his little snowball was full of shit. Bobby Drake was not into one night stands. He did not go out and take some nameless face home with him -- or go home with them, as was more often the case -- and return to normal the next morning. He did not get so gloriously plastered from cheap beer that he stopped caring what sort of reproductive organs the night's conquest had, just as long as they got five, ten minutes alone in a bathroom stall, pressed against the rickety door and groaning and panting and saying all the right things and not meaning any of them.

So Bobby laughed it off, as always, and kept his confessions to himself. He buried his guilt and chatted up some attractive person in some clone of a bar he'd visited once and ingratiated himself until they felt sorry for him or drunk enough to duck into a dark corner of the building, or in the alley behind the dumpster, or in their conveniently nearby apartment because Bobby knew many of these people were trolling for people just like him. He would close his eyes and shut off his mind, let body memory carry him through and leave him whispering curses under his breath.

If he played his cards right, sometimes he would end up in an actual bed with the anonymous body, and for a little while, maybe just an hour or two, he could convince himself that the skin woven tightly around him was enough, that he could shut out the rest of the world and let his soul stay as cold as the ice he wielded. For just a few fleeting moments he could be held and caressed and loved, and it was enough, it was more than enough, because it was more than he expected.

The last time had been a quick fling -- quick even for him -- in the backseat of some stranger's car. Bobby had idly let his fingers toy with the hair splayed across his lap, vision blurry but trying vainly to focus on something outside the window. A trash can, maybe, or the homeless woman huddled next to it, head bowed against the rain. Usually he didn't care what his partners looked like, as long as they were warm and willing, but lately they had all started to look like the one before: tall, thin, long limbs and dark hair. But none of them had that easy grace with which Jean-Paul always carried himself, nor did they have that crooked smirk that set Bobby's teeth on edge every time, or those stupid fucking ridiculous elf ears. Bobby had made fun of them for so long, purposely flicking the tips when Jean-Paul wasn't aware of his presence and running, laughing, before the book or remote control or whatever had been in Jean-Paul's hand could hit him.

As he sat in the car, hand trailing over and over again around the head at his abdomen, he absently drew his fingertips over the ears, disappointed to find they curved softly just like everyone else's, didn't taper into sharp points and draw out a surprised and infinitely satisfying hiss from the rest of the body.

When he'd finally pieced together why Jean-Paul acted so differently around him, why his notoriously scathing tongue blunted somewhat around him, he'd panicked. Annie had mistaken it for ... what had she said? Homophobia? Right. He'd played with the idea of making a written account of his sex life and letting her decide from that. No, that was hardly the case. It was that Jean-Paul hadn't slept with him, hadn't overtly flirted with him or really expressed any sort of physical interest in him that made Bobby's breath catch in his throat, made him laugh nervously and clutch his beer bottle a little tighter. He was known for letting his words escape him before they were cleared by his brain, so the fact he came across as a completely oblivious moron wasn't so surprising; of course he'd known Jean-Paul was gay. He might be clueless most of the time, but he wasn't stupid. It was the fact that that last piece had fallen into the puzzle, that he'd placed his finger on exactly what had been eluding him for so long, that made him react the way he had.

He'd driven home from the bachelorette party, more than a little tipsy and by the grace of some generous deity not crashing headlong into a telephone pole, mind racing with bittersweet recognition. Jean-Paul had made him so uneasy, had upset him so badly up to that point because it was too close to encountering his own reflection. He was too familiar with the yearning glances, with the sharp ache that dulled over time into a slow burning pain that ate away at everything it touched. It made him spend many nights losing himself in another's arms and willing the hurt away no matter how much of his soul it took with him.

Bobby stopped abruptly, making a woman in high heels plow into his back. She glared at him and cursed, ordered him to watch what he was doing and passed him, cell phone never leaving her ear. Bobby looked up and sighed, aware that he'd walked around the block and had conveniently found his answer at his own front door. Well, Jean-Paul's front door, to be more precise, but it was as much his home now as any other place was.

It was the knowledge that when he and Jean-Paul made love, it was each other's face they saw, it was each other's scents they breathed in and each other's voices they relished. It was knowing that when he woke he wouldn't need to worry about getting to a bathroom before he puked up the previous night's contents out of sickness and overwhelming shame, that the sheets next to him would still be warm, that the fiery ache inside him was a good thing and not the uncomfortable itch of his inner self being ripped apart.

It was that he didn't have to imagine those silly ears, that he could roll the tips between thumb and forefinger and always, always draw a long, slow shudder from nearby lips. It was learning every intimate secret of the body he woke next to, every curve, every freckle, every sensitive spot, every ticklish area. It was not having to reorient himself every morning, the brief flash of panic as he tried to remember what gender the person was, what they looked like.

It was that they had been seeing each other for just over a month before they slept together, and how utterly familiar Jean-Paul felt even during that first night. Two fractured halves had come together, fixed back into place and mending wounds neither thought would be whole again. Jean-Paul had seen him first as a sort of kindred spirit, however cliched that might have been, and Bobby had, predictably, run in the opposite direction before he smacked into the brick wall that was his own realization that he was only scared of what he'd been looking for all along. Like a cat chasing a mouse and then confused beyond action as to what to do once it was actually caught, Bobby had felt the air sucked from his lungs as he came to understand what it was like to be considered a human being and not just a fun diversion for the evening.

It was coming home, and suddenly Bobby knew he had never been so sure of anything in his life.

He turned his face back to the sky, squinting in the glaring sunlight and grinning madly. A passing teenage boy with a mohawk and an impressive variety of piercings grinned uneasily at him as he passed, and Bobby returned the smile with the first real dose of emotion he'd felt in a long time.

He walked up the short flight of stairs and pushed a series of numbers, forehead pressed flush against the cool brick of the building and waiting, counting silently.

"Yes?"

His lips curled into an involuntarily smile. "Je suis...uh...le sorry."

Silence, and Bobby knew that Jean-Paul was glaring at the intercom. Then he began to worry because, really, Jean-Paul never had to take his time in coming up with remarks during a fight. Maybe he really was mad this time. Maybe --

"Bobby?"

"Huh?"

"...I will be down in a few minutes."

"Oh, I bet you're a mess, aren't you? Sitting around on the couch, crying and stuffing your face and watching Lifetime."

A derisive snort from the other end of the line, a muttered remark in decidedly ungentlemanly terms about what exactly Bobby could do with his commentary and precisely how to do it, and somehow Bobby knew he had been forgiven. And this time he would not run. He would embrace it and cling to it, because he knew now that it was all he had, and it was all he wanted, and it was enough, because it was more than he expected.


End file.
